Stuffy Jared's Jewelers

I only had twenty minutes to prep Vero on rings. At the last-minute my wonderful friend agreed to go ring shopping with Wm to provide a second opinion on any sparkly he might select. Vero has great taste, but she's much more bold and stylish than I. We needed a ring store and fast, so I could coach her in my preferences. Jared was selected because it was the biggest, most obvious jewelery store we passed on the road.

The store itself is clean, glitzy, and stuffy. Everything feels sterilized - and it really ought to be because the super-bright lighting would make any speck of dust stand out like a BYU student in the UofU section at a football game. Every sales person was dapper and stiff-backed in their pressed suits. I wouldn't be surprised if they're required to buff their name-tags.

Austin (unfortunately, not as fortuitous a name as one might hope) was courteous, not pushy, but a bit stuffy. He waited for me to point at rings to show me. (I liked Renee who just handed me rings as she started to hone in on my style.) He commented he'd seen a lot of times where a mother or sister or someone would come in with the prospective fiancée and change her opinion onto a different ring. "Oh, I have opinions enough," I assured him.

As I pulled out rings I remarked to Vero why I did and didn't like each one. "Took thick," I complained about a ring. She quipped back, "You mean it has too much bandwidth?" Sadly, I was a bit absorbed in the sparkles and shortage of time, so she had to point out her clever pun to me. In retrospect, I'm awful proud of her for her good geek joke.

Overall? Despite their vast selection of rings and touting of over 9,000 combinations (uh-huh, I'm not impressed by your mathematic permutations) and their "walk right out with a ring" strategy. I dislike their attempt at to convey upscale by snooty. I'm really not impressed by their selection which consists of mostly uber-sparkly rings. There was one ring there that was sort of nice, but it wasn't wonderful. If you want a lot of glitz in your ring - this is your place. If you want something more subdued - don't bother.

One word of warning. Do NOT let them clean your ring! When you enter the store they offer to clean any rings you're wearing - a nice, obvious ploy to make you wait around and admire the other rings while separated from your own. The did a lovely job brightening my topaz and gold ring. Vero's wedding band even came back immensely glistening. Later inspection, however, revealed they'd ruined the surface of her ring. I don't know what process they used to clean the ring, but it was apparent they weren't using the standard chemical dip. So, whatever you do, don't let them touch your ring!